PodcastSociedade e cultura Ciências da vidaInglês

Lifeworlds

de Alexa Firmenich

NovoSensoria | Desire Mandalas12 de novembro de 2026 · 25 min

Episódios: 80
Publicação: mensal
Último episódio: 12 nov 2026

Sobre o podcast

Lifeworlds is an intimate dialogue with our planet’s ecologies and with those who are translators and bridges between the human and beyond-human.

Our guests are farmers, lawyers, scientists, investors, indigenous scholars, artists, and many more — with them, we explore the mindsets, skills and actions required to forge deep connections with nature and to enter into close relationship with the lifeworlds of other beings.

We begin to change the world when we change our ways of seeing and being. Lifeworlds points us towards a deeper reformulation of core human identities, asking who it is we share the Earth with and what our human role may be at this pivotal moment in time. It is through the doorway of inhabiting and understanding multiple perspectives that we can begin to heal a culture and psyche that is steeped in duality. We have lost our place as humans amongst all life. This is our call for healing, engagement and wonder.

www.lifeworld.earth

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episódios 80

Sensoria | Desire Mandalas
12 de novembro de 202625 minTemporada 4
I read from a collection of my short essays and evocative stories, published this year in the delightful volume Sensoria by Humans & Nature Press. Rich in description and transportive imagery, I’ll bring you on …
Notas do episódio
I read from a collection of my short essays and evocative stories, published this year in the delightful volume Sensoria by Humans & Nature Press. Rich in description and transportive imagery, I’ll bring you on a journey deep into the lush forests of Northern California, where your senses will flip and knowing suspended; the trekking foottrails of the high Himalayas on a pilgrimage around the sacred mountain Manaslu; asking what it means to live in a topography of prayer, the body as a doorway to deep participation, traces of longing, psyche and Eros, and what the significance of this may be in how we approach the potential of these times. A friend playfully called these “phenomenological field notes tackling human cognition, imagination and culture”. Sit back and enjoy.

Read full text here.

Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.

Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd & The Rising by Tryad CCPL.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
38. Mother Trees And Forest Resilience - with Suzanne Simard
3 de agosto de 202655 minTemporada 4 · Episódio 38
This episode is a live interview with Dr. Suzanne Simard at the MOTH Festival of Ideas in London. Suzanne is the forest ecologist whose researched popularised notions of the Wood Wide Web and the Mother Trees …
Notas do episódio
This episode is a live interview with Dr. Suzanne Simard at the MOTH Festival of Ideas in London. Suzanne is the forest ecologist whose researched popularised notions of the Wood Wide Web and the Mother Trees, and revealed the living networks that wire a forest together to share carbon, water and resources. We talk about the courage it took to call a tree "mother," the grizzly encounters and burned-down research plots behind the tidy data, and the findings from her Mother Tree Project and luminous new book, When the Forest Breathes - chief among them, that a forest, given half a chance and a few elders left standing, knows exactly how to breathe its way back to life.
Episode Website Link
Links:
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Meditation | Deep Time
24 de julho de 202620 minTemporada 4Bônus
[Republished with better quality audio] This is a meditation I wrote and recorded to plunge us through epochs of cosmic time, through the tremendous evolutionary processes that preceded us, became us, and are …
Notas do episódio
[Republished with better quality audio] This is a meditation I wrote and recorded to plunge us through epochs of cosmic time, through the tremendous evolutionary processes that preceded us, became us, and are us. It grants us invaluable context on the great tales of life whose memories are held in our bones.

This is our origin and lineage. I hope you find yourself nourished and moved by the experience.

This script is inspired by and takes language from the deep time practices of Joanna Macy and the Deep Time Walk of Stephan Harding and colleagues, along with some of the evolutionary notions explored in Otherlands by John Halliday – to them I am deeply grateful. My script here. Please credit if used or shared.

Music attribution: Take Off and Shoot a Zero. Stunt Island Album. Written, produced, and performed by Chris Zabriskie. Published by You've Been a Wonderful Laugh Track (ASCAP). © 2011 Chris Zabriskie.

Art made with… You guessed it. Midjourney.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
37. Whale Lexicons: A Language of the Deep — with David Gruber and César Rodríguez-Garavito
2 de julho de 20261 h 12 minTemporada 4 · Episódio 37
What does it actually mean to translate a language that has never been written down or spoken in air, whose holders are ancient ocean denizens, and may not even carry concepts we'd recognize as our own? That's …
Notas do episódio
What does it actually mean to translate a language that has never been written down or spoken in air, whose holders are ancient ocean denizens, and may not even carry concepts we'd recognize as our own? That's the question sitting at the center of this episode, and those answering it have formed one of the more radical partnerships in science today: Project CETI and MOTH. CETI is a collective of fifty-plus scientists attempting to listen to and translate the communication of sperm whales.
MOTH is a legal collective working to bring that science before courts, in the hope that whales might be granted something like legal standing and rights. In a barn in the English countryside, David Gruber and César Rodríguez-Garavito walk us through what it takes to listen this closely to another species, and whether this new convergence of human, animal, and machine intelligence could spark a watershed moment for conservation and consciousness.
What we'll cover:
- The sperm whale's anatomy of perception, acoustic vision, and what it's like to navigate a world of inky darkness through sound
- The deep evolutionary kinship between humans and whales, and what their convergent vowel-like sounds suggest about the origins of language
- How Project CETI uses machine learning to find phonetic structure and contextual meaning in whale codas
- The legal arguments emerging from this research, from the right not to suffer to the right to a cultural life
- A remarkable multi-whale birth event — and what it reveals about coordination, kinship, and social roles among whales
- The ethical guardrails (NACT) proposed for AI-assisted animal communication technology, and the risks of getting this wrong
- Whether this new convergence of human, animal, and machine intelligence could spark a watershed moment for conservation and consciousness
Episode Website Link
Links:
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Credits: Sperm Whale Sound (Project CETI)
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
36. Stingless Bees, Ancient Honey & the Amazon's Future – with Dr. Rosa Vasquez Espinosa
2 de abril de 20261 h 11 minTemporada 4 · Episódio 36
What if one of the most powerful tools for saving the Amazon rain-forest was a bee most people have never heard of?Enter the stingless bee – a 65 million year old resident of Earth that produces honeys teeming …
Notas do episódio
What if one of the most powerful tools for saving the Amazon rain-forest was a bee most people have never heard of?
Enter the stingless bee – a 65 million year old resident of Earth that produces honeys teeming with medicinal molecules and has co-evolved with indigenous Amazonian communities across millennia. Today, these bees are at the keystone species at the heart of a pioneering conservation movement spanning science, law, economics and Indigenous rights: one that recently secured the world's first legal recognition of the rights of an insect.

Dr. Rosa Vásquez Espinoza is the National Geographic Explorer and conservation scientist whose NGO Amazon Research Internacional is spearheading these initiatives. In this episode we explore the life world of the bees themselves, the pioneering science and bio-economies emerging around their extraordinary honey, the deep co-evolutionary bond between stingless bees and Amazonian communities, and how bridging indigenous and Western knowledge is proving essential for the forest, for the communities who steward the bees and the legal frameworks being built to protect them.

Episode Website Link: https://www.lifeworld.earth/episodes-blog/stinglessbeesamazonfuture

Links:
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.

Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd & The Rising by Tryad CCPL.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
35. From Stardust To Sentience: Astrobiology & Life in the Cosmos – with Adam Frank
6 de março de 202660 minTemporada 4 · Episódio 35
What is life, and are we alone in the universe?In this episode I sit down with Adam Frank, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Rochester, prolific science communicator, and author of five books …
Notas do episódio
What is life, and are we alone in the universe?
In this episode I sit down with Adam Frank, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Rochester, prolific science communicator, and author of five books including The Blind Spot and The Little Book of Aliens. Adam is one of the most compelling voices working at the intersection of astrobiology, philosophy, and the human future.
We journey from the stunning variety of exoplanets we're only beginning to map, to the deep questions on detecting life in space. Adam argues that the search for extraterrestrial life can't be separated from the question of what life means here on Earth. Astrobiology, it turns out, may be our most useful mirror for understanding our own civilisational moment.
We also get into the hard problem of consciousness, the blind spot at the heart of modern science, and how cosmology like art and myth - can be a gateway to awe. A conversation that leaves you more at home in the strangeness of the universe and probably less certain about what “alive” even means.
Episode Website Link
Links:
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd
Photo Credit: Hubble Space Telescope
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Soulfire Sessions III: Many Minds – with Kensy Cooperrider
1 de março de 202656 minTemporada 4
Consciousness is one of the great running threads beneath every episode of this show: a loaded term, tangled up with questions of sentience and intelligence, and carrying the most direct ethical implications …
Notas do episódio
Consciousness is one of the great running threads beneath every episode of this show: a loaded term, tangled up with questions of sentience and intelligence, and carrying the most direct ethical implications for how we live on Earth.
This week I'm joined by Kensy Cooperrider, cognitive scientist and host of Many Minds podcast, circling the questions of what mind, intelligence, and experience might be beyond the human. Kensy has had hundreds of conversations with scientists working at the edges of what we know about minds, and also the most creative, concrete apertures into other lifeworlds: names, goosebumps, dreams, fire, taboos, medicine. We also discuss whether, if we're willing to stretch words like sentience across the animal kingdom, what happens when we begin to explore AI - the mineral, the silica, the metallic? Unanswerable questions, maybe, but what fun to explore.
Links:
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
34. Black Mountains College: Rethinking Education for Our Times - with Ben Rawlence
2 de fevereiro de 202658 minTemporada 3 · Episódio 34
Today’s episode explores a simple but urgent question: is our education system still fit for the world we’re entering? Climate disruption, AI, and uncertainty demand new forms of education fit for complexity …
Notas do episódio
Today’s episode explores a simple but urgent question: is our education system still fit for the world we’re entering? Climate disruption, AI, and uncertainty demand new forms of education fit for complexity and change.
A rich lineage of alternative and experimental education has been evolving for decades, seeking to make learning more holistic, place-based, creative, and ecologically grounded. The focus of today’s conversation is one of those institutions: Black Mountains College in Wales. BMC is building a university model explicitly designed for a warming world, where nature is often the classroom and curriculum blends ecology and climate science with the arts, systems thinking, and community-rooted practice.
I’m joined by its co-founder and CEO, Ben Rawlence, award-winning writer and former human rights researcher, to explore:
- The historicity of Western educational systems
- What the role of a university should be in society
- Black Mountains College as model of the future of education
- The role of ecological imagination
- Youth, eco anxiety and the challenges of parenting in today’s planetary moment
Episode Website
Links:
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Poetry | Fruitful Darkness with Rilke
26 de outubro de 202518 minTemporada 3Bônus
This Lifeworlds episode is a devotional journey into the work of Rainer Maria Rilke, the lyrical German poet of thresholds and embracing transformations.Through readings of his most luminous poems and writings …
Notas do episódio
This Lifeworlds episode is a devotional journey into the work of Rainer Maria Rilke, the lyrical German poet of thresholds and embracing transformations.

Through readings of his most luminous poems and writings, we explore how Rilke guides us deliciously in reconciling suffering and turmoil with tremendous beauty. It’s an offering for anyone standing in the in-between, for those moving through sublimation, and longing for those secret, dazzling encounters with primal life forces.

Rilke’s words are an invitation in. To move towards. His poems are prayers…. “to go out into our hearts as onto a vast plain, so that life can feel us as it reaches for us.”
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
33. Empatheatre: Social Sculpture & Feeling Across Worlds - with Dylan McGarry
16 de outubro de 20251 h 17 minTemporada 3 · Episódio 33
In this episode, we explore the role of theatre and empathy in transforming worldviews. Dr. Dylan McGarry is one of the founders of Empatheatre, a South African theatre-making company and methodology that turns …
Notas do episódio
In this episode, we explore the role of theatre and empathy in transforming worldviews. Dr. Dylan McGarry is one of the founders of Empatheatre, a South African theatre-making company and methodology that turns research and storytelling into living social sculpture. Their plays create what they call amphitheatres for empathy - spaces where art, ritual, and dialogue help people listen across difference, from mining conflicts to ocean governance to human-wildlife coexistence.
Empatheatre’s productions have brought together communities, policymakers, and activists that rarely meet, showing how imagination can transform civic life. The process of creating the plays generates profound potentials for restorative justice. As Dylan says, empathy is not about agreement, but about creating a vessel strong enough to hold our differences while keeping us in relation.
We will cover:
- Empathy as a creative act
- Theatre and storytelling as Trojan horses that open conversations that traditional politics often can’t
- How to design spaces that allow lifeworlds to touch and the practices that help us shift into another’s perspective
- How empathy, when practiced collectively, becomes a form of governance: a new infrastructure for democracy and care
Episode website
Links:
- Share your input for the whale production
- Empatheatre
- Dylan’s PHD
- 5min Empatheatre doc
- Indlela Yokuphila: The Soul's Journey (ZULU) film & the radio play used in the court case
- Lalela Ulwandle Trailer
- Umkhosi Wenala doc about Zulu musical on indigenous traditions & animist relationships
- Steiner’s 12 senses
- MOTH
- Project CETI
- Karen Bakker
- Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals
- One Ocean Hub
- dylanmcgarry.org
- Instagram: @dylan_mcgarry
Photo Credit: Casey Pratt. It captures a significant moment in a collaborative theatre-making & storytelling project titled "Umkhosi Wenala"
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
32. Depth Psychology and Soul Initiation – with Bill Plotkin from Animas Valley Institute
11 de julho de 20251 h 15 minTemporada 3 · Episódio 32
In this episode, I sit down with Bill Plotkin, founder of Animas Valley Institute. Over the past 40 years, Bill has developed intricate, nature-based models of human development and education that challenge …
Notas do episódio
In this episode, I sit down with Bill Plotkin, founder of Animas Valley Institute. Over the past 40 years, Bill has developed intricate, nature-based models of human development and education that challenge dominant psychological frameworks and invite us into a maturation process rooted in wholeness, wildness, and the more-than-human world.
We explore their three major maps of a person’s “soul-centric journey” and cover topics including:
- Why most modern humans remain developmentally stuck in early adolescence
- The 8-stage Soulcentric Developmental Wheel and how it mirrors nature’s rhythms
- The four cardinal facets of the psyche, and the inner protectors that distort them
- Whether other species undergo their own versions of soul initiation
- Why the path to a mature culture will not come from the strategic mind, but from descent, mystery, and imagination
- This is a deep-dive into a body of work that’s revolutionizing the lives of thousands of people, and how to think about adulthood, education, and healthy human cultures.
Episode Website Link
Links:
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd
Photo Credit: Midjourney
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
31. Holistic Landscape Restoration and Inspirational Returns – with Willem Ferwerda from Commonland
2 de julho de 20251 h 9 minTemporada 3 · Episódio 31
Almost 40% of Earth’s land is degraded, meaning that the natural cycles that sustain biodiversity, water, food, and livelihoods are breaking down. This degradation is an ecological crisis, and, it also lies at …
Notas do episódio
Almost 40% of Earth’s land is degraded, meaning that the natural cycles that sustain biodiversity, water, food, and livelihoods are breaking down. This degradation is an ecological crisis, and, it also lies at the root of massive social breakdown, displacement, and conflict. And it’s accelerating.

In this episode, I speak with Dutch ecologist and entrepreneur Willem Ferwerda, founder of Commonland, one of the leading global initiatives tackling land degradation via large-scale holistic landscape restoration. Their work spans over 20 countries, with projects restoring millions of hectares from South Africa to Spain, Australia to the Netherlands. We get into their unique 4 Returns Framework - a powerful, intuitive model that integrates ecological, social, financial, and inspirational/spiritual returns.

We talk about:
- Communities building long-term visions together across sectors
- The importance of meeting different audiences where they are
- The role of storytelling, spirituality, and local leadership
- How restoring land helps restore meaning and purpose
- And how, ultimately, all this work is about regenerating life
Episode Website Link

Show links:
Look out for meditations, poems and readings in between episodes.
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd
Photo Credit: Commonland
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
From Orbit to Intimacy | Beyond the Overview Effect
10 de junho de 202516 minBônus
What if the next shift in planetary consciousness didn’t come from looking back at Earth from space, but from listening deeply to the voices already here? In this thought piece I propose the “inworlding effect” …
Notas do episódio
What if the next shift in planetary consciousness didn’t come from looking back at Earth from space, but from listening deeply to the voices already here? In this thought piece I propose the “inworlding effect” as the overview effect of our time: one where developments in science, technology, law, and many other disciplines are revealing our entangled presence within a multispecies world.

Medium Article Link
Episode Website Link
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
30. Grief, Song and Ceremonies of Mourning - with Alexandra “ahlay” Blakey
20 de maio de 20251 h 5 minTemporada 3 · Episódio 30
Today we’re joined by artist, musician and communal grief ritual facilitator Alexandra “ahlay” Blakey to speak about the cultural forgetting of communal mourning, the sacred role of professional mourners, and …
Notas do episódio
Today we’re joined by artist, musician and communal grief ritual facilitator Alexandra “ahlay” Blakey to speak about the cultural forgetting of communal mourning, the sacred role of professional mourners, and the re-emergence of grief ceremonies as necessary spaces of remembrance, healing and repair.

Ahlay brings her experience weaving song, body, and ritual into collective spaces where grief is given breath and movement, and we explore the history of grief practices across cultures, the political power of public mourning, and how grief can soften the heart and stitch community back together. We explore what to expect in a communal grief ceremony, and ahlay shares the story behind her 200-voice album WAILS: Songs for Grief, inspired by whales, ancestral sorrow, and Francis Weller’s work. Within the episode are woven tracks of her haunting songs, so tune up your headphones, and sink in.

Episode Website Link
Show Links:
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd
Photo Credit: Cover image (Earth Altering)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
29. Carbon and the Grammar of Life - with Paul Hawken
22 de abril de 20251 h 3 minTemporada 3 · Episódio 29
In this episode we’re joined by the renowned environmentalist, activist and author Paul Hawken to explore the lifeworld of carbon and its role as a vital agent in the story of life.Paul speaks about the …
Notas do episódio
In this episode we’re joined by the renowned environmentalist, activist and author Paul Hawken to explore the lifeworld of carbon and its role as a vital agent in the story of life.

Paul speaks about the dysfunctions in Western language on how we speak about climate and nature, and why metaphors of war, control, and fixing actually perpetuate the very mindset that created the crises in the first place. We explore common traps we fall into, and how to recarbonize, to bring life back and restore relationality in how we think, feel, and act.

This is a wide-ranging and intimate conversation on language, grief, science, reverence, and what it means to come home to Earth and to the deeper meanings of life.

Episode Website Link

Show Links:
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
28. Whale Dreaming & Ocean Songlines - with WHAIA
3 de abril de 20251 h 19 minTemporada 3 · Episódio 28
In this episode, we journey into the vibrational worlds of sound, ancestry, and deep listening with Whaia, a Ngāti Kahungunu woman of Māori descent and First Nations sonic weaver and …
Notas do episódio
In this episode, we journey into the vibrational worlds of sound, ancestry, and deep listening with Whaia, a Ngāti Kahungunu woman of Māori descent and First Nations sonic weaver and multi-instrumentalist.
Raised between the salt of the Pacific and the red dust of the Australian desert, Whaia’s voice carries ancient songlines, blending traditional Māori instruments, crystalline singing bowls, and her original mother tongue, the language of Te Rā, the Sun. We explore her work singing with whales, reclaiming cultural instruments once left silent in museums, and remembering the sacred oceanic highways navigated by her Polynesian ancestors, guided by the stars and whale ancestors.

This is a conversation about song as medicine, the voice as ceremony, and reclaiming lineage through sound. We ask: what might the whales be singing to us now? What frequencies are we called to remember in order to heal ourselves and our waters?

Stay on after the episode wraps to hear a special feature from Whaia’s debut album WHAIA & WATER — the first of a twelve-part series known as her Sacred Sonic Sessions.

Episode Website Link

Show Links:
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd
Photo of Whaia: Chanel Baran Photo
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Poetry | The World Thinks in Poetry
26 de março de 20257 minTemporada 3
In a remote cabin in Vancouver Island in 2019, far away, I sat by the shore. I listened. I re-read poetry. I swam with jellyfish. I ate bright salmon berries and raw samphire. I gazed around and listened to the …
Notas do episódio
In a remote cabin in Vancouver Island in 2019, far away, I sat by the shore. I listened. I re-read poetry. I swam with jellyfish. I ate bright salmon berries and raw samphire. I gazed around and listened to the songs of the land. This piece of writing is a result of my days there.

Full poem on Lifeworlds Website
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
27. The Ecology Of Health - with Dr. Mackenzie Hall
18 de março de 20251 h 13 minTemporada 3 · Episódio 27
Where does your body end and the Earth begin? In this episode, we explore the real and poetic parallels between human health and planetary health, and how nature’s language moves in our bodies. Joining me is …
Notas do episódio
Where does your body end and the Earth begin? In this episode, we explore the real and poetic parallels between human health and planetary health, and how nature’s language moves in our bodies.

Joining me is Dr. Mackenzie Hall, a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Functional Medicine, who helps us trace the Earth’s vital systems through the lens of humans as ecological systems.
We ask:
- How could one imagine the Earth’s vital organs as reflected in human anatomy?
- How does the Earth balance and health and detoxify, and how might this mirror how we work with our own bodies?
- How does the body's energetic system hold, manage and deal with pathology?
- How do we listen for the Earth’s pulse?
- How could this affect how we work as earth protectors and regenerators?
This brings up a profound point: if we are to ensure the Earth’s aliveness, we have to feel it as our own body. And, if we can sense the Earth’s rhythms as our own, can we also become its white blood cells, human agents of healing embracing and embodying its circulatory wildness?

Episode Website Link: https://www.lifeworld.earth/episodes-blog/theecologyofhealth

Show Links:
- Aaro Wellness
- The Web that has no Weaver
- "Understanding Chronic Illness"
- Alexa’s Article: Our Planet’s Blood
- Earth’s Frequencies: Schumann Resonances
- Yellow Emperor's Classic (Classical text upon which all Chinese Medicine is based)
- Biocubes.net: Infographic on living and human biomass on earth
- Meditation: The Cosmos in Your Food
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd & The Rising by Tryad CCPL.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Soulfire Sessions II: with David McConville
18 de fevereiro de 20251 h 3 minTemporada 3
David McConville is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher who explores how technology shapes our perspectives of Earth—from local places to our cosmic context. Our conversation examines how worldviews …
Notas do episódio
David McConville is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher who explores how technology shapes our perspectives of Earth—from local places to our cosmic context. Our conversation examines how worldviews influence infrastructure, using Los Angeles as a case study. We explore the paradigm of "living infrastructure," discussing how David's studio Spherical collaborates with communities and organizations to develop mapping and co-design tools. Even if you’re not in LA, this episode offers valuable insights into how communities can work together to create resilient infrastructure systems that honor their unique cultural needs and local environments.

Links:
- Spherical
- Spherical Labs
- Living Infrastructure Field Kit
- Dawn Danby + David McConville : When Utopia is Oblivion
Bio:
David McConville is co-founder and lead cosmographer of Spherical, a strategic design and integrative research studio based in xučyun / Oakland, CA. His PhD in Art and Media from Plymouth University examined how cosmological perspectives shape cultural imaginaries and ecological practices.

Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
From Your Host: Season’s Reflections and Q&A
28 de janeiro de 20251 h 10 minTemporada 3
In this episode, I share some reflections on Season 2, before diving into our first listener-guided Q&A! You’ll be hearing from fellow listeners who enquired on topics like: Earth-centered governance …
Notas do episódio
In this episode, I share some reflections on Season 2, before diving into our first listener-guided Q&A!
You’ll be hearing from fellow listeners who enquired on topics like:
- Earth-centered governance
- De-extinction
- Alternative economies
- Language and stories about nature
- Which lifeworld I’d inhabit
- Green tech and individual agency
- What is the purpose of humans?
Thank you to everyone who sent in these thought-provoking questions.
Episode Website
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
26. Speculative Designs & Embodied Imaginations - with Superflux
17 de dezembro de 20241 h 11 minTemporada 2 · Episódio 26
What if you could inhabit the future? In this episode, we dive into the work of Superflux, the visionary design studio turning imagination into tangible worlds. From multispecies banquets and rewilded …
Notas do episódio
What if you could inhabit the future? In this episode, we dive into the work of Superflux, the visionary design studio turning imagination into tangible worlds. From multispecies banquets and rewilded ecological sanctuaries to mythic friezes that re-enchant cityscapes, co-founder Anab Jain shares how embodied experiences can transform how we see — and shape — the world.
Join us as we explore speculative design, active hope, and the power of imagination to move us beyond ecological breakdown and into interspecies thriving. A celebration of wonder, possibility, and the art of asking: "What if?"
Episode Website Link
Show Links:
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Practice | Body Compass
2 de outubro de 202414 minTemporada 2Bônus
This is my take on ancient and intuitive sensory experience that taps into the innate intelligence of the human body, a blend of body compass, Zen Beginner's Mind, a shamanic medicine walk and Goethean science …
Notas do episódio
This is my take on ancient and intuitive sensory experience that taps into the innate intelligence of the human body, a blend of body compass, Zen Beginner's Mind, a shamanic medicine walk and Goethean science.

The practice asks you to find a place in the natural landscape where you could walk undisturbed for some time, and have an encounter with an element of nature. A true act of lifeworld-ing!

I guide you through a short introduction and the instructions. Attached on the website page is a link to the full instructions in PDF, and listed here in much briefer bullets below.

I recommend listening in full, then using either of the instructions when you choose to do the practice itself.

Abbreviated instructions
·     Before entering into the natural landscape, you’ll walk to a threshold place, and stop.
·     Here you will physically draw a threshold that you will walk across.
·     Once you’ve done that, pause, connect with the land, speak your intention, ask for permission.
·     Cross the threshold, and start walking towards where you feel a tug. Be conscious of the way your body can intuitively lead the way. Use the senses.
·     At some point, you may come across a being in the land that catches your attention. It could be a spiders web, a stone, a patch of moss, a dead bough of a tree, a stream, a blade of grass, truly anything. Approach, introduce yourself.
·     Spend a moment in presence with them, in beginners mind.
·     Use Goethe’s Exact Sense Perception instructions –then imagine it transforming. Then release to receive. Let it communicate back to you.
·     Stay here as long as feels right.
·     When it comes to the time to go, thank this natural being and start walking back to your threshold place.
·     When you cross the threshold, thank the land and when you’re ready, step across back into the other world.
·     Gently wipe out the threshold door and take some time upon returning to digest anything that may have arisen for you.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
25. The Connected Wild: Earth’s Internet of Animals - with Dr. Martin Wikelski
24 de setembro de 20241 h 4 minTemporada 2 · Episódio 25
Throughout history, many cultures have observed and interpreted animal behavior to predict events and read the landscapes around them. The multispecies lives of our planet weave an astonishing network of …
Notas do episódio
Throughout history, many cultures have observed and interpreted animal behavior to predict events and read the landscapes around them. The multispecies lives of our planet weave an astonishing network of information across the face of the globe, a web of knowledge compromised of thousands of creatures communicating with each other, across species, and with their environments.
How we listen in on this collective intelligence? Today’s guest Martin Wikelski is director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space (ICARUS) - a project which has been dubbed as ‘the internet of animals’. Their team has created a global ecological monitoring system, attaching remote sensing chips to thousands of animals in the wild, in effect uncovering and translating, as Martin says, ‘the collective intelligence of life on earth’.
By tuning in to the communication and culture of animals, the project his project reveals the planet's hidden workings with enormous implications for conservation, global finance, and human infrastructure.
We explore many of these forward-thinking ideas in this episode, adding another layer to Lifeworlds’ ongoing question: How do we sense the planetary and see through the perspectives of other life?

Episode Website Link

Show Links:
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
24. Guardians of the Earth: The Rise of Ecocide Law - with Pella Thiel
27 de agosto de 202456 minTemporada 2 · Episódio 24
Could the destruction of nature become considered as serious a crime as that of genocide? How does the structure of law shape a civilisation’s norms, behaviors and overarching story?Today we’ll be discussing …
Notas do episódio
Could the destruction of nature become considered as serious a crime as that of genocide? How does the structure of law shape a civilisation’s norms, behaviors and overarching story?

Today we’ll be discussing international Ecocide law, a massively growing movement that wants to embed the notion of ‘ecocide’ crime at the highest levels of law - at the International Criminal Court in The Hague - and create a powerful deterrent for the further damage to ecosystems and people globally.

Our guest is Pella Thiel, a maverick ecologist, farmer, author and who has co-founded the Swedish hubs of international networks like Transition Sweden, End Ecocide Sweden and is an associate of the Centre for Environment and Development Studies at Uppsala University. Pella was awarded the Swedish Martin Luther King Award in 2023 and the Environmental Hero of the year 2019.

We discuss:
- Why ecocide law is different & a game changer as compared with other environmental laws
- How it can help create a new moral baseline, shifting global values and mindsets
- Where the tensions or synergies might lie between the Rights of Nature and Ecocide law
- The notion of positive tipping points
- And how an Embassy of the Baltic Sea might play out as a practice center for ecological community building
Episode Website Link
Show Links:
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd
Photo credit: Law Statue

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
23. Wild Avatars: Nature in Virtual Reality - with Marshmallow Laser Feast
7 de agosto de 20241 h 9 minTemporada 2 · Episódio 23
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to breathe yourself into your own body? To flow with the out-breath of trees into your own fractaling lungs, to dance ribbonlike into an ancient ceiba’s vasculature …
Notas do episódio
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to breathe yourself into your own body? To flow with the out-breath of trees into your own fractaling lungs, to dance ribbonlike into an ancient ceiba’s vasculature, to stitch an ecosystem together as a mycelium highways sparkling with energy? In this episode we explore the transformational potential of virtual reality through the work of Marshmallow Laser Feast, an artist collective that has emerged as a leading VR creators in the last decade.

They exhibited internationally from London to New York, Melbourne to Seoul, their work included in major exhibitions at institutions including the Barbican Centre, Saatchi Gallery, Sundance Film Festival, and SXSW. 'In The Eyes Of The Animal' was nominated for the Design of the Year by Design Museum Beazley Awards and won the Wired Innovation Award (2016). Most recently, the team at MLF won the Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes Award for Innovation in Storytelling and Best VR Film at VR Arles Festival for ‘TreeHugger, Wawona’.

Ersin Han Ersin is the director of MLF and describes to us how they use dazzlingly aesthetic real-time VR experiences to explore the invisible perspectives of nature’s lifeworlds – and how they are constantly pushing the bounds of what technology makes possible in expanding our ecological sensitivities. I enquire into:
- Who they need to speak to in order to create their masterpieces and translate the umwelts of other species? What other scientists, poets, musicians, make this possible?
- What is it that virtual reality can create that no other medium can?
- What is the building block of a multisensory story?
- What are some of the astounding ways that other beings experience the world that are divergent from the human?
- How could global education be redesigned based on kinesthetic educative tools like VR?
Episode Website Link.

Show Links:
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.

Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd
Photo credit: MLF exhibition at AMCI in Australia (photo from their website)
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
22. Zen Buddhism and the Soul of Lifeworlding - with Brother Spirit and Sister True Dedication / Plum Village
4 de junho de 20241 h 26 minTemporada 2 · Episódio 22
Today’s episode brings us into the heart and philosophy of Zen Buddhism, as practiced by the Plum Village monastic community that was founded in 1982 by the Vietnamese peace activist, monk, poet, and teacher …
Notas do episódio
Today’s episode brings us into the heart and philosophy of Zen Buddhism, as practiced by the Plum Village monastic community that was founded in 1982 by the Vietnamese peace activist, monk, poet, and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. Today it has grown into Europe’s largest Buddhist monastery, with over 200 resident monks and nuns, and known as one of the most actively engaged Buddhist communities offering insight on the modern world, and on the climate and ecological crises.

We’ve spoken on the show about fragmented consciousness, a mind that sees parts and not the whole. Meditation and other Buddhist practices are one of the core ways of how we can heal minds and views. And so we will hear from two Plum Village monks: Sister True Dedication and Brother Spirit. Before entering the monastery, Sister True Dedication studied History & Political Thought at Cambridge University and worked as a journalist for BBC News. In the early years of her monastic training, she assisted Thich Nhat Hanh in their engaged Buddhist actions for human rights, religious freedom, applied ethics, and ecology. Brother Spirit began his monastic training in Plum Village in 2008, and before ordaining he studied mathematics at Cambridge and worked professionally as a composer, and as such has since composed many of the community’s beloved chants. They both helped to found the international Wake Up Movement, a community of young meditators finding new ways to combine mindfulness and engaged Buddhism.
We talk about:
- the fragmentation of consciousness
- how to hold the perspective of non duality and interbeing within unlikely contexts, and how doing so grants us agency and transformation
- dehumanization, de animation, and what Buddhism teaches about our relationship to other life and other intelligences
- the Mayahana Diamond Sutra (the world’s earliest printed text) and its invitation for us to reconsider four key notions of existance
- how to find and make peace with one’s activism
- the seeds of wisdom that lie dormant in 4000-year-old magnolia trees
- how to hold the suffering of the world and call upon our ancestors for support
- spiritual bypassing, instrumentalising, and get out of jail free cards
Episode Website Link
Show Links:
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd
Photo credit: Plum Village website
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Poetry | A Sunset with Mary Oliver
26 de maio de 202415 minTemporada 2
Woven together loosely by my narrative, this special episode traces through a selection of five dazzling poems from the Pulitzer-prize winning poet Mary Oliver; bringing us into giddy relationship with the …
Notas do episódio
Woven together loosely by my narrative, this special episode traces through a selection of five dazzling poems from the Pulitzer-prize winning poet Mary Oliver; bringing us into giddy relationship with the natural world -- with geese and grasshoppers and miracles and scars and existential queries on what makes life worth living. Mary's sharp and gentle perception of nature, her ability to communicate its messages with such simple and profound language, is at once both balm and flame for the soul.

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.” – Mary Oliver
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
21. The Science of Plant Intelligence & Neurobiology - with Paco Calvo
2 de abril de 20241 h 8 minTemporada 2 · Episódio 21
Are plants conscious? Do they experience forms of cognition and intelligence that go beyond patterned and hard-wired evolutionary behaviors? Do intelligence and consciousness really require a brain and central …
Notas do episódio
Are plants conscious? Do they experience forms of cognition and intelligence that go beyond patterned and hard-wired evolutionary behaviors? Do intelligence and consciousness really require a brain and central nervous system? Or should we consider intelligence on Earth to be less brain-bound, perhaps not even residing in the individual self, but rather in an enmeshment within an ecosystem? A swarm intelligence, a networked mind, distributed, adaptive, like a murmuration of starlings in the setting sun. And how would we even begin to start answering these questions empirically?
Today it is my explicit intention to change the way that you think about the kingdom of plants and the intelligence that resides within it. This is a controversial topic with scientists on all sides of the spectrum vehemently advocating for or against concepts.
It was Darwin who first introduced to the Western world the concept of the "root brain" hypothesis, where the tips of plant roots act in some ways like a brain, a distributed intelligence network. They challenge our very notions of an individual. Plants exhibit qualities that are adaptive, flexible, and goal directed – all hallmarks of an intelligence that goes beyond hard wired impulsive responses. They make decisions, perform predictive modeling, share nutrients and recognize kin. Electrical and chemical signalling systems have been identified in plants very similar to those found in the nervous systems of animals, including neurotransmitters like dopamine and melatonin.
Our guest today is Paco Calvo, a professor at the University of Murcia in Spain, where he leads the Minimal Intelligence Lab focusing on the study of minimal cognition in plants. He combines insights from biology, philosophy, and cognitive science to explore plant behavior, decision-making, and problem-solving, challenging conventional perspectives of his field. Paco has said that ‘to ‘know thyself’, one has to think well beyond oneself, or even one’s species. We are only one small part of a kaleidoscopic variety of ways of being alive.
Episode Website Link
Show Links:
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Soulfire Sessions I: with Daniel Schmachtenberger
19 de março de 202458 minTemporada 2
Soulfire Sessions have come to Lifeworlds! These occasional special episodes will be our take on the good old concept of a fireside chat. Intimate, philosophical, challenging, sometimes zany, always insightful …
Notas do episódio
Soulfire Sessions have come to Lifeworlds! These occasional special episodes will be our take on the good old concept of a fireside chat. Intimate, philosophical, challenging, sometimes zany, always insightful, these are discussions with visionaries who don’t often get the airtime to speak about their deeper ways of being and feeling – and what lights their souls on fire.
In this first session I speak with my dear friend Daniel Schmachtenberger, a social philosopher and founding director of the Civilisation Research Institute. Daniel has a particular interest in the topics of catastrophic and existential risk, artificial intelligence, civilization and institutional decay and collapse as well as progress, collective action problems, social organization theories, and the relevant domains in philosophy and science.
With the fire roaring, we delve into the psychological and metaphysical underpinnings of the metacrisis, traversing topics such as fragmented consciousness, Daoism, wholeness, feeling in service to thinking, dharma enquiries, conflict theory, and what it might mean to live a meaningful life.
Links:
- Daniel's website: civilizationemerging.com
- Dharma Inquiry
- Daniel on how to live a meaningful life
- Civilization Research Institute
- Bohm and Krishnamurti conversations
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
20. Seeds: The Life Keepers - with Milka Chepkorir Kuto
12 de março de 202459 minTemporada 2 · Episódio 20
Seeds. Memory keepers. Speckled time travellers. Capsules of deep, earth wisdom. To control seeds is to control life. To be a seed is to hold the genetic code of turning starlight into matter, of morphing your …
Notas do episódio
Seeds. Memory keepers. Speckled time travellers. Capsules of deep, earth wisdom. To control seeds is to control life. To be a seed is to hold the genetic code of turning starlight into matter, of morphing your body into soft green tips that tremble in the wind and drink fire. There is a deep co-evolutionary relationship that exists in your bones, between humans, land, ecology, and seeds.

And we are losing them. An absence of flourishing seed systems directly correlates with a loss of cultural identity for thousands of communities around the world. Life for rural communities fractures. We’re losing our seed keepers. The freedom of seeds therefore becomes a political act of justice, on food sovereignty, indigenous rights, and restoring power back into the hands of farmers. So how does this rich history weave into the story of today’s guest?

Milka Chepkorir Kuto is an anthropologist and climate and human rights activist. She is a member of the Sengwer indigenous community of Kenya’s Rift Valley, and she has become a representative for her people in defending their land rights after violent evictions from their traditional lands. Milka is also a Coordinator of Defending Territories of Life at ICCA Consortium, and has worked the UN Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Her community is now working to revitalize people-land relationships through indigenous knowledge, and Milka works with the women to save and protect their ancestral ways and seed systems. As Milka speaks, you can feel in her spirit this visceral connection to place, story, food, culture, a weaving of seed, hand, heart, human, forest. Milka herself is a seed, a story keeper, a culture holder, an inspirational tie between ancestral knowing and the modern world.

Episode Website Link
Show Links:
Milka’s Crowdfunding Site for Lifeworlds listeners: “Help the Indigenous Sengwer Peoples of Kenya”
Revitalizing Sengwer People-Land Relationships
Seed savers network Kenya
Global Alliance for Future of Food
Open Seed Sharing
Earthed course: Saving Seeds for a Better Future
Will Bonsall, Scatterseed Project
Movie: SEED, The Untold Story
Gaia Foundation Seed Sovereignty
Seeds of Freedom Trilogy
Navdanya from Vandana Shiva
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd
Cover Photo by AI
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Aqui estão os 40 episódios mais recentes de 80. Os mais antigos estão no feed do podcast.

Podcasts parecidos

Mais podcasts de Sociedade e cultura

BioCentury This Week

Negócios

BioCentury · 407 episódios

BiotechTV – News

Ciência

BiotechTV · 510 episódios

EHA Unplugged

Ciência

European Hematology Association · 204 episódios

Elevating Cancer Treatment

Ciência

Dr. Jay Chaplin · 110 episódios

Everyday Wellness: Midlife Hormones, Menopause, and Science for Women 35+

Saúde e fitness

Everyday Wellness™ · 799 episódios

Giants Shoulder

Ciência

Evan McGloughlin · 178 episódios

Huberman Lab

Saúde e fitness

Scicomm Media · 458 episódios

Let’s Talk Micro

Ciência

Luis Plaza · 261 episódios

Este podcast é seu?

Confirme com uma entrada no seu feed: você recebe um código aqui, adiciona como podcast:txt no canal do seu feed e nós verificamos. Depois disso, seu podcast aparece como “verificado” no SoundNode.